The Arab Spring puts a strain on Jordan's ecology

IT WAS one of those magical moments. I had my binoculars trained on a kingfisher, perhaps a migrant from Europe, when the Muslim call to prayer echoed beautifully over the marsh.

Beside me in the birdwatching shelter, my guide Hussein muttered in annoyance. Was he worried about leaving me there so he could go and pray?

Just then a big, bright flutter of white and blue exploded from the reeds. This was no migrant. It was a white-throated kingfisher, an Asian species at the western end of its range.

“He’s always scared,” Hussein explained, gesturing towards the nearby mosque. That’s what had annoyed him&colon; Hussein knew the call to prayer spooked this bird and he feared we would miss it.

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A few years ago he wouldn’t have worried – there would have been plenty of kingfishers. Hussein is the resident bird guide at the Azraq Wetland Reserve, a tiny oasis in the Jordanian desert about 100 kilometres east of the capital Amman. One rarely hears about ecological destruction amid the human tragedies of the Middle East. But here, and elsewhere, the conflicts are taking their toll on the environment. Just as water scarcity can lead to wars, so wars can lead to water scarcity.

Azraq means “blue” in Arabic. It is, or was, the only permanent oasis in the surrounding 12,000 square kilometres of desert. Porous basalt carries rainwater here from mountains in Syria, which created 25 square kilometres of wetland, for centuries a haven for people and wildlife.

Just as water scarcity can lead to conflict, so conflict can lead to water scarcity

Signs of human habitation, including mysterious stone circles up to 70 metres across, date from the early Palaeolithic. The wetland was a vital crossroads for long-distance caravans and has long been a stopover for migrating birds. A survey in 1967 counted 350,000 on a single day.

Then the water balance went wrong. Jordan is a dry country, but tries to manage its scarce resources wisely. Population growth has been slowing in line with prosperity and careful development might have supplied everyone without damaging the underlying ecology. But Jordan has an extra problem&colon; repeated, sudden influxes of refugees.

Palestinians from successive Israeli conflicts already account for about one-third of the country’s 6.5 million people. Less publicised waves of Iraqi refugees arrived in 1990 and 2003; the Jordanian government estimates that about 450,000 remain. Now refugees are arriving from Syria.

Such sudden surges of people have to be supplied fast. Hazem Al-Khreisha, the reserve manager, says Jordan started pumping the Azraq aquifer to supply the Palestinians. In 1982, the country’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature persuaded the government to stop. A few months later there was no alternative but to start again.

The aquifer is falling by nearly a metre a year, threatening to destroy it as a source of fresh water. Beneath it lies another layer of rock full of ancient, salty water, and the change in water flow is allowing that to seep into the fresh water above. Salinity has more than doubled since 1990.

In 1992, the aquifer sank so low that the wetland dried up. Water buffalo died; a species of fish found nowhere else in the wild survived only in aquariums. A bird count in 2000 found only 1200, mostly passing through. Local people also suffered.

In 1994, the park started pumping some water back to recreate ponds. It wants to restore a tenth of the lost wetland, but has managed barely half that. Still, the efforts have brought back water buffalo and some birds.

It may be a temporary reprieve. Despite all the pumping, Amman’s taps still run dry in summer. People who can pay get rooftop water tanks filled by trucks every two weeks. People who can’t, struggle. Demand for water outstrips supply; the stretch of the Jordan river I saw was empty.

And now Syrians are fleeing to Jordan. Ten thousand are already in towns, and with the failure of peace efforts so far, camps are expecting thousands more. The first things the Jordanians erected were water tanks.

They will probably be filled from the Yarmouk river, a major tributary of the Jordan shared by Syria, Jordan and Israel. Control of it was one prize of the 1967 six-day war, which also drove refugees to Jordan.

The vicious circle of conflicts, refugee crises and water shortages continues. With more people in Jordan needing water, less will be available for farmers already struggling with drought. The tiny, reborn wetland at Azraq is at the end of a long and thirsty queue. It, and its aquifer, will be lucky to survive.

Yet Jordan is doing many of the right things. It recycles treated sewage water. It is co-opting local people into saving Azraq. It has reached agreements with neighbours on shared water. The 2009 national water plan calls for groundwater pumping to be cut to sustainable levels, in favour of innovations like desalination.

Maybe Jordan will succeed. But the plans are in danger of being trampled by another wave of desperate refugees. And above it all looms the threat of climate change and continued drought.

Hussein and his colleagues seemed to me like people fighting for something they believe in, a fight as worthy as any in this Arab Spring. I hope Azraq survives. The people need it as much as the kingfishers do.